Dream Catcher
by Insidiae
Summary: [Naive little boy, not even your dreams can save you now.] When Simon faints, the Lord of the Flies follows him into his dream, and taunts him with the inevitable. Oneshot, genfic, Simoncentric.


Well this ended up being longer than I meant it to. Whoops.

Well anyways, this takes place right after Simon faints after hallucinating about the Lord of the Flies. Enjoy!

* * *

Everything was white. So, so white. 

Simon looked around, with a vague sort of curiosity towards his surroundings. It was endlessly white, blindingly so, and the boy couldn't help but wonder why his eyes didn't hurt. He raised a hand to wipe the bangs from his face, when he noticed that he had none. Confused, he brought up his second hand to his head and realized that his his hair was short and neatly cut. Looking down at his body, he saw his arms were pale rather than reddened by the hot sun, and his clothing wasn't torn or muddied. Everything was as it was the day they crashed.

It was then that it clicked with Simon. _Ah,_ he thought. _A dream._

With that in mind, he smiled just a bit, walking along a floor that he couldn't see and probably didn't exist. He was in the middle of just gaping, empty space, with no walls or ceilings or doors or windows or anyway out, but even so, he was happy. He liked being asleep, being unconscious - and, having fainting spells as frequently as he did, it was familiar ground. He never had nightmares, not even when all the talk of the Beast began, not even when the littluns started to cry out in the darkness of night. In his dreams, he was safe. In his dreams, unlike any time in reality, he had control. In his dreams, there were no monsters or hunters of Beasts.

"Is this how you try to run away? Naive little boy, not even your dreams can save you now."

...Well, there were never any Beasts until _now._

Simon's head whipped around, his body following shortly thereafter, to face the things all nightmares were made of. In the middle of the never-ending whiteness with him was the Lord of the Flies, mouth gaping and eyes sneering. The bugs swarmed around It, and even though Simon knew It was nothing more than a pig's head on a stick, the Lord was still a living, breathing demon in his mind's eye. Simon was unable to hold eye contact and turned his head downwards to avoid the haunting stare.

"...Cruel," he murmured, surprised with himself for having any voice at all. His fingers clenched and unclenched as the Lord of the Flies laughed mockingly, but he found he couldn't move his body in any other way.

"_Cruel?_" the head repeated. It grinned darkly at Simon, who found himself unable to resist looking back into Its eyes. "Ignorant child, cruel does not begin to describe it." Simon's eyes widened as It spoke, watching in awe as the flies began to gather together. "I am everything you wish would go away in the world." The bugs, now amassed, started to assemble themselves into recognizable shapes - a finger, a hand, an arm...

"I am the reason things go wrong."

A toe, a foot, a leg...

"I am the reason people hate."

A pelvis, a waist, a neck...

"I..."

A body.

"...Am sin."

By this point, the insects had accumulated together, forming a corporeal body for the Lord of the Flies to stand upon. It was no longer this immobile, limited, staked thing - It had power and movement and a presence that had previously been absent. Simon wasn't sure whose body was trembling more: the Lord's, from all the moving, living flies that made it up, or his own, from the undescribable fear he felt. His legs shook, wobbled; he realized that they wouldn't support his weight for much longer, and an instant after the thought had crossed his mind, he collapsed onto the invisible floor beneath him. His heart pounded in his ribs and his blood in his ears, his chest rising and falling rapidly as his lungs gasped for breath. Through the panic, some small part of him managed to find it strange that his throat didn't burn from the efforts of his labored breathing like it usually did. It was then that he remembered that there would be no pain because this was all a terrible, terrible dream - and that knowledge, he realized with horror, did nothing to relieve his fear. In fact, it only made his fear grow, the understanding that his last sanctuary was no longer safe finally hitting him like a physical blow.

The Lord of the Flies sneered at him, snout pulling back to reveal fangs. The dark cloud of Its body stalked towards him, stopping right in front of him to leer down from Its towering position above him. Simon huffed, cheeks red and sweat beginning to drip down his face as Its shadow fell over him. There shouldn't be a shadow, some small part of Simon thought, because there wasn't any light source. Just white upon white upon white, with no torches or suns or candles. There's no light, he thought again, and so there shouldn't be a shadow, but he could feel it clearly hanging over him, covering his skin and clothing in shades. It was horribly unfair - Simon wasn't able to find any light in this place, but It could make Its own darkness.

He managed to pull together some infintesmal scrap of courage to look up at the Lord of the Flies through hooded eyelids. The swarming bugs made him want to retch, but he resisted his gagging by biting down hard on his tongue and inhaling sharply through his nose. He wasn't sure if people could actually heave in their dreams, but he didn't want to take the chance. Still, there was something he didn't understand, and he knew had to find out, even if it killed him.

He took another sharp breath, steadying his heart. "What is it you want?" he croaked, the exhaustion and desperation clear in the moan of his voice. The Lord laughed again, a sound that Simon likened to stained glass windows shattering in his old church. The laugh sounded like broken hearts and desperate hope and futile wants and sinenvysinlustsingluttonysinpridesingreedsinwrathsinslothsin. The noise clashed angrily in Simon's mind and he groaned again haplessly, covering his ears with his hands and trying to escape the sound that would not let him.

"Weren't you listening before?" It jeered. Simon winced and whimpered. "I just want a bit of fun. Everyone wants a bit of fun." The Lord of the Flies paused, looking on bemusedly at his pitiful state, then scoffed. "Except you, that is. Why are you so adverse to fun, Simon?"

"..." The boy mumbled something inaudibly, lips quivering in unheard syllables. The Lord grunted, like the pig It was, in a gesture for him to repeat himself. Simon lookd away, and It snarled, growing irritated. The child jumped a bit at the noise and fear made him search for his voice again.

"I'm...n...not adverse to... to... fun," Simon shook. "F-fun...is good. Fun m... makes people... happy." His lip split under the pressure of his teeth, and Simon had the odd sensation of tasting the blood without feeling any of the pain that should have gone with it. He looked hazily up at the Lord of the Flies. "What you want isn't fun. It makes nobody happy."

The Lord scoffed again, raising an arm lazily. The insects that made up the limb moved as one entity. "You don't know what you're talking about, boy. They seem to be having plenty good fun to me right now."

"Now," Simon replied in a rather defeated tone. "Yes, now. They're happy now." His brow scrunched in pathetic thought and his voice sounded distant even to his own ears. "But what about later? What about when they come back to themselves...?"

"Then _I'll_ have fun!" the Lord of the Flies exclaimed. "That will be my time!" Simon cowered at the voice as the Lord narrowed Its beady eyes. The Lord of the Flies crouched in front of him, smirking maliciously. "Stupid, batty Simon. There's nothing you can do."

"I can try-"

"You insufferable child!" the Lord roared, a black hand shooting out to wrap around Simon's neck, pulling him off of the invisible floor. "You can't do anything, so just give up! I told you I was going to get angry, and now you'll understand!"

The buzzing fist tightened around Simon's throat, making him cough as he was held just above the ground, his toes barely touching it. He could feel the wings and bodies of each fly fluttering and shuddering against his skin and was certain he would have retched from the awful sensation had he been able to get the air needed to do so. There was still no pain, because it was a dream, but Simon still knew that somehow, he was dying.

"You can't do this. It's not possible. This is a dream. I can't die. This is a dream. This is a dream. This is a dream. This is a..."

The Lord of the Flies snorted derisively before leaning forward so Its snout was by Simon's ear. Its coarse fur scratched against his cheek uncomfortably as It whispered menacingly.

"My dear boy, you know as well as I do that this is more real than anything in your reality."

With a grumble, the Lord released his neck, watching with amusement as the boy dropped to the ground with a yelp. Startling, however, was when Simon picked himself off of the ground, looking around the whiteness desperately.

"Gotta get out... gotta warn the others..."

The Lord of the Flies cackled. "Is that what this is about?"

"Leave me alone! I can still help them!"

"Foolish Simon," the Lord jeered. "They won't listen to you."

"I know!" cried the unfortunate boy. "I know, I know! But..." His hands lost themselves in his short, neatly cut hair, tugging on the strands sharply and still feeling no pain. "I still have to try."

The Lord of the Flies paused, giving him a curious look. It made a disgruntled, impatient noise before speaking again. "You know what will happen if you go out there, don't you?" Simon replied with silence and could've sworn that the Lord sighed, like a parent trying to explain to a child that there is a large gap in their logic.

"You'll die."

The silence hung in he air.

Slowly, the hands lowered from Simon's hair, fisting at his sides. His eyes were downcast as he whispered his response.

"Possibly."

"And it won't change anything," the Lord added.

"Maybe."

"And it will all be a giant waste."

"I'm sure."

The Lord of the Flies paused again, Its body moving in a mass to sit down lazily. "So why bother?"

The whiteness was starting to fade, Simon noticed. He smiled sadly.

"Because it's all I can do now."

The Lord chortled, beginning to fade away as well. "So what exactly are you going to do?"

Simon laughed dryly. "You talk as though I have a plan," he chuckled bitterly. The whiteness was seeping from the edge of his vision, marking the beginning of the end of his dream. "Jack, and Ralph, and 'specially Piggy, they're the thinkers, remember? I really don't know what to do. After all, I've already done everything I could think of." The Lord of the Flies was presently almost completely vanished, but It managed to give Simon one last dark grin filled with promises of dark things to come before disappearing. "What else is there to do?"

The whiteness melted away.

With a start, Simon awoke. His nose was bleeding, and the awful bugs were buzzing, but he had chance to do something now, a chance to help the others.

But...

"What else is there to do?" he repeated his question to the cool evening air of the island.

And the island answered back with nothing.

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Please review! 

-Insidiae-


End file.
